“The early meeting room on College Street was about 10 x 10 feet with this huge pillar in the middle of the room. You had to gather around it. There was a couch and a desk pushed up against the wall. There were pillows on the floor. Anyone who came early got the couch, everyone else got a pillow…They weren’t really steering committee meetings ’cause what women wanted was a support group.”

“We would sit on the floor, on pillows. There was lots of frank discussion about things. Stigma, drug use, dating. A lot of things women didn’t really feel safe talking about anywhere else.”

“We were an eclectic group of all shapes and sizes and backgrounds but we shared our hopes and fears in that room and it kept our secrets. There was laughter and tears and anger and hope amid a bleak prognosis. We hung on each others words as if they were pure gold.”